AbacusWizard

Not necessarily; if you go down deep enough into the atmosphere you encounter an enormous black slab of what first appears to be some sort of stone, but if your lander gets close enough to OH MY GOD IT'S FULL OF STARS

Alternately, can we get androids for KSP?

Awesome! I teach physics myself and I might be using KSP to demonstrate principles of orbital mechanics to some students in an optional series of workshops this summer.

It's useful for three things: • "test _____ on launchpad" contracts • if your ship is generating too much electrical power and you need something that's going to consume a little bit of power and not do anything with it • foundation on which to build ORBITAL DISCO BALL

Sails. Wind. Storms. An interface in which I give commands to crew members rather than psychically controlling every piece of the ship. Cargo contracts. Fishing. Pirates. Sea monsters. In short, KSP 2: Kerbal Sea Pirates.

Now I want Kerbal Aqua Adventure to be the sequel.

Eh, I think having a 0° inclination moon is a good idea. There's already enough for new players to learn all at once without also having to figure out inclination changes too.

Pol. What is your favorite moon? Srsly though I am very fond of Minmus. Easy to get to, easy to land on and launch from, low gravity so a little ∆v goes a long way, large flat spots for runways and construction, great site for mining fuel, beautiful alien landscapes, fresh minty flavor. Laythe is also pretty cool for its pleasant beaches, beautiful views of Jool, and oxygenated atmosphere, but it's kinda far for regular travel.

Gah! Come on, DevTeam; why not just make it sortable?

From the latest devnotes (http://kerbaldevteam.tumblr.com/): vessels in the tracking station can be sorted in order of when their next manoeuvre node is set to occur Hooray! This is the best news about 1.1 I've heard yet! I'm hoping the code is expandable to allow other ways to sort the list as well--alphabetically, by type, by sphere of influence, by mass, by amount of a given resource, by number of kerbals on board... such great possibilities. EDIT: Or maybe not. Boo.

Cool idea. You could even set the interval to, say, 1/8 of a second to get frames for an animated gif.

I generally map all parachutes to the "abort" button in case I suddenly realize mere seconds before impact that I forgot to turn off stage lock and I need to throw out everything I can to slow down RIGHT NOW. Solar panel arrays (and extendible radiators) usually go on action group 1 for space stations, motherships, etc. or on action group 6 for probes, landers, transport skiffs, etc.

Putting lander legs on the rover to raise it up to the level of the docking clamp takes a lot of careful design, but if you can get it to work, it works very well. I used that approach a few versions ago to build a rover that could dock to the underside of a surface outpost on Duna, and later used the same setup on Laythe. You could probably do something similar--maybe with the smaller lander legs, and a docking clamp on the front?--to design a small rover that could drive up the Mk3 cargo ramp and attach itself to a docking clamp inside.

That's a neat idea. Basic telescopes at the Space Center; ability to put better telescopes in orbit to avoid atmospheric blurring; plenty of stock solar systems to "discover" including our own, other realistic ones, and various amusing subtle references to fictional ones. (This solar system has only one planet, a gas giant. Orbiting the gas giant is a large moon that appears to be forested. Orbiting that moon is a smaller moon--wait, that's no moon...)

Exploring the depths of a gas giant's atmosphere and the interior of a comet's tail? This is sounding more and more like an Arthur C. Clarke Short Story Simulator (which suits me fine!).

For gas giants I think it would make more sense to have different biomes based on altitude. In real life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Probe) the big challenge (beyond the high-speed atmospheric entry itself) was keeping the drop probe operational under the intense pressure and heat deeper and deeper in the atmosphere; it would be really interesting to try sending something as deep as possible to encounter new "biomes" and get more and more science out of the big green fellow.

I have occasionally used lithobraking to kill horizontal velocity when landing on the flats of Minmus. Come in from a really low suborbital trajectory, use engines and/or RCS to decrease vertical velocity to almost zero, extend landing gear, touch down gently and commence rolling forward at high speed, use brakes (gently!) to gradually slow down and stop. Works pretty well, and if the craft is designed right it can take off from a rolling start as well.

I don't even bother with the Research Rights Sell Out--by the time I've unlocked the whole tech tree, I usually have so much money from contracts (and enough orbital infrastructure to easily earn lots more) that I don't need the extra cash... and besides, I like to think of science points as my score.

<sings> Standin' by the spaceplane runway, Watchin' the spaceships fly away, yeah; I'm just standin' by the spaceplane runway, Wastin' time. </sings>

Yeah, that's true. I decided a little while ago to stop using the delete button as a way to challenge myself to design "tidier" launches that jettison all expendable stages before reaching orbit (or while on a temporary collision course with the destination). This also led to the development of the H-Wing, a two-seat craft with a KAS harpoon gun for grabbing debris and towing it onto a suborbital trajectory, which has been an awful lot of fun to fly!

You can rename them from the tracking station whether they have a command pod or not.

Behold! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDLBTvpzf_s

Starting from high-altitude ground helps quite a bit. You can also "cheat in" a few extra m/s of ∆v by taking a running leap off an east-facing cliff as you turn on your jetpack. In related news, Scott Manley once took an intrepid kerbalnaut from the surface of Gilly to the surface of Kerbin with nothing more than jetpack fuel and a modded-in EVA parachute (before reentry heat damage was added, of course).

Yeah, I started including a small probe core on every ship no matter what after the first time I tried sending a single-seat lander from an orbital mothership down to the Mun's surface with a scientist on board... and had to manually stabilize it all the way down.

I just recently started using the RemoteTech mod, which makes it a lot easier to remember to include an antenna, at least on uncrewed probes... 'cos if you don't, it's not leaving the launchpad!